Change And Progress

Because Poul Anderson's For Love And Glory is set millennia in our future and one character, Hebo, has lived for nine hundred years, the author has to show us social change and technological progress as between the time of writing and the time of the novel and also within Hebo's lifetime.

There is faster than light interstellar travel and contact with other intelligent species and most human beings live outside the Solar System. Within Hebo's lifetime:

cities have disappeared from Earth;

the Terrestrial population has shrunk to less than that of Britain now;

a routine health check of Hebo when he enters the Solar System now takes seconds instead of hours.

See Earth In FLAG.

It is to be hoped that we continue to progress instead of to retrogress.